Publications

RHiNO Publications

Previous research has found that pre-term born children have shown decrements in lung function, exercise capacity, and increased respiratory symptoms compared to term-born children. This research paper investigates if 7 year old children born prematurely have decreased levels of physical activity and increased sedentary behaviour as a consequence of increased respiratory problems compared to term born children.

In this paper produced from the Respiratory and Neurological Outcomes of Preterm Birth Study (RANOPS) the results found that it is common for children born preterm to have increased wheezing problems and more frequently on inhaler treatment than term born children.

This research paper was the first one produced from the Respiratory and Neurological Outcomes of Preterm Birth Study (RANOPS). The results show that even being born slightly earlier than normal (around 37-38 weeks) carries some increased risk of respiratory problems in childhood (such as wheezing) compared to birth at 39 weeks or over.

For this project the research team looked at all the available evidence on whether inhaled medicines (like those used in asthma) help the problems prematurely-born children have with their breathing. Unfortunately, the team found very little research to support if they work (or not). This means that a large study like BEBE may be able to answer this question.

Since we had found that prematurely-born children have lower scores on breathing tests, we wanted to find out if they had reduced levels of physical activity. The results of this study showed that most children actually participate in very similar levels of activity; however, the overall levels in all children were well below the recommended national guidelines.

In this research paper the team investigated if prematurely born children had any differences in blood pressure compared to children born ‘on time’. A small difference was found which indicated the blood pressure in prematurely born children may be somewhat higher than average.

Often one research study is not enough to find out an answer to the question, especially if it is too small. One way to solve this is to look for as many similar studies as possible (a systematic review) and put all the results together (a meta-analysis). By doing this for studies which were all looking at the lung health of children born prematurely, we were able to show that these children have reduced measurements on breathing tests.

This study showed that children born prematurely can have a narrowing of the airways which happens during exercise. This seemed to be more of a problem for children who needed lots of help for their breathing when they were on the neonatal unit. We found that the narrowing could be improved if a medicine to open the airways was given after exercise. This may help us to understand more about the type of reaction which causes the narrowing to happen.

This important study showed that children born at 33-34 weeks have lower scores on breathing tests than children born ‘on time’. The scores were similar to children who were born very prematurely (32 weeks or less). These results made us think that this group of children deserve more attention than they have had previously in terms of following them up and seeing how they progress.